Why Your Past Matters

Warning: Many of you reading this are going to identify with what is described herein, and it may shock you!

Clients come to me at Skipnotherapy for myriad reasons, including weight loss, smoking cessation, confidence building, stress relief, etc. When they make their appointments, they believe in earnest the issue for which they are coming to see me is what really needs to be addressed. Most of these clients truly have no idea that the problem or behavior they are trying to change is actually a symptom of a deeper, underlying issue. In my first session with clients, I always do a ‘diagnostic interview,’ wherein the deeper issue is usually revealed or indicated.

So often, but not always, clients are aware of emotionally traumatic events from their past, often from their childhood. What they do not know is that the very problem or issue they are attempting to resolve is often directly related to that past event or events. Follow me back to the source on this: It never occurs to them that the reason they have not been able to lose weight, for instance is related to childhood sexual or physical abuse. Or that the excess weight is actually related to a fractured sense of self-confidence. Or that the fractured self-confidence is related to their aversion to call attention to themselves. Or that their aversion to calling attention to themselves is related to their belief that attention leads someone to want to physically or sexually abuse them.

Soooooo, in order to not call attention to themselves, they may dress more conservatively, avoid standing out in a crowd, not make themselves available for challenging or leadership positions, not make noise, not try out for the team, for the play, for the club, not make waves, be more pliable, more agreeable even when agreeing is not what they truly believe. And all the while, because they are not living congruent to their true beliefs, they create internal stress, and that stress may lead to compensating, sometimes anesthetizing behavior, such as smoking, overeating, drinking, avoiding social situations, hyper-vigilance, poor sleep, and a host of autoimmune syndromes.

All from an incident or instances of childhood abuse in its many variations.

So a life has been completely altered because of one incident, and like dominoes, beliefs and behaviors, set up one-after-another, are different than they might otherwise have been – from what the person would have wished them to be. And now, all they know is they are sick and tired of being overweight, or stressed, or not able to sleep, or being a smoker, or…

And so, it is the symptom, not the REAL problem, which brings them to me. But in the end, they are so glad they came – that they do not have an incurable problem – that they are not terminally broken. And that just because nothing else seemed to have worked, that something just might, and that it very likely will be this – hypnotherapy.

Please understand, I am not asserting that everyone with weight issues, or all smokers, or people with any of the other issues I described start with childhood sexual, physical or emotional abuse, but it happens to be the case often.

If you or someone you love identifies with what I have described here, please consider a solution that may really help set you on a new course – one of lightness, and happiness, and peace – yes, peace for once!

I can be reached at www.skipnotherapy.com.